Newsletter: April 19th

There's lots going on as we work toward winding down the school year. In the upcoming weeks we will be performing a few songs at the Sparkleberry Fair (Saturday, April 28th @ 1:50 on Stage 1), recording a CD of the songs we sing in class, taking a field trip to the Manns-Simons cottage (Thursday, May 10th), and continuing our studies - including making plans for summer reading.

As for right now, the kids are wrapping up a study of poetry writing, exploring fractions in math, conducting a scientific inquiry into motion, and preparing to launch book clubs into some fun and (developmentally appropriate) challenging texts.

Here are some pics from our work with motion. The kids have been working over the past week to answer the question, "Does adding more force to an object make it travel further?" Of course, they all felt they knew the answer to this. Our goal, though, was to design a scientific experiment that would gather data to support (or disprove) their hypothesis. Having proven a relationship between force and motion, we're now exploring a new question, "Do objects move more easily on some surfaces than others?"

For this experiment the kids needed to use all sorts of math skills - including accurate measurements.

In an attempt to replicate the same amount of force for multiple trials the kids pulled a rubber band
back to various measured spots on a "launch pad."

They launched a paper ball from distances ranging from 1/2" to 2 1/2" then measured how many
centimeters the ball traveled.

After launching their ball five times from each distance the kids found the median (middle value)
in their data set and used this to represent their findings.